The topic of tax reform in the next few years of Daming was discussed for several days at the Jiangning meeting.

Although there are still many details that have not yet been finalized, especially the setting of some specific amounts and thresholds, it is still necessary to take into account the feelings of the people. However, these works do not affect the overall situation, and can be continued to be refined by professionals from the household department, anyway, there are still two months before the final pilot.

But Zhu Shuren will also use a strong posture in the end, in case the spokesperson of the interests of the big landlords and big factory owners will help them get by.

The main ministers attending the Jiangning Conference still have a lot of national affairs to discuss after the topic of tax system reform.

Fortunately, Zhu Shuren understands the truth that rice should be eaten one bite at a time, and his steps are big, and it is easy to talk about it.

Therefore, none of the remaining topics involve the construction of systems and law changes, and all of them are specific transactional issues. Only by combining such tension and relaxation can the resistance be suppressed to a minimum.

Beginning in mid-May, the agenda for the second and third phases of the Jiangning meeting has been gradually put on the foreground.

The topic of the second stage is about the industrial policy of Daming in the next seven-year plan, and the direction of scientific and technological research and development support. There is no conflict or contradiction in this topic, and the atmosphere of discussion is relatively relaxed.

Because of his advanced age, Shi Kefa does not understand these things, and he will not participate in the discussion. Therefore, it is mainly Zhu Shuren and Zhang Huangyan, plus the Ministry of Industry Shangshu and Fang Yizhi, who has also entered the cabinet, to discuss. Even Zhu Shuren's side concubine, Fang Ziling of the Daming Academy of Sciences, will also participate in some issues.

The topic of the third phase is about the construction plan for the newly occupied territory in the next seven years, plus some state-owned engineering projects, as well as the investment plan of the Ming Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Although the Qing Dynasty in history had many maladministrations, in line with the idea of mastering the skills of the Qing Dynasty to control the Manchus, Zhu Shuren was still willing to learn from the desirable places that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had done.

The imperial expenses of the Qing Dynasty were actually not smaller than those of the Ming Dynasty, and there were so many things that the emperor had to do to the south and other things that cost the people and money, but the reason why the Qing Dynasty stabilized the financial situation was that in addition to often extorting the Weaving Mansion and the Lianghuai Salt Merchants, an important reliance was the Internal Affairs Office.

Although the existence of the internal affairs government has all kinds of drawbacks of exploitation and monopoly, it can be regarded as "competing with the people for profit", but these industries that lack fertilizer cannot collect the benefits of the desperate people, and they are nothing more than competing for profits with the rich businessmen and gentry among the people.

Before Zhu Shuren ascended the throne, the Shen family was the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, with so much royal property (the royal family is not the royal family, it is the property of the Ewang Mansion) and the private property of the Shen family. Nowadays, there is a need for an internal affairs ministry to coordinate the operation. In addition, the original Huangzhuang Huangshang and other small fish and shrimp in the Ming Dynasty were merged together to operate, which can roughly play the role of the state-owned assets management department in later generations.

With the establishment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it will also be easier to invest in remote newly occupied territories that ordinary private businessmen do not bother to invest in. After discovering this wonderful use, Zhu Shuren of course wanted to learn from the Qing people's internal affairs office, and become bigger and stronger for his own use.

……

"The matter of changing the tax system has been tentative, and today I will discuss it first, in the next seven years, the direction of scientific and technological development of my Ming Dynasty, as well as the development of industrial technology, how the imperial court should guide.

The ultimate goal is, first, to continue to enrich the country and strengthen the army, but at the same time, it must also serve the possible use of troops against Burma and Vietnam in the future. Let's see what shortcomings need to be made up today. ”

After the second stage of the topic opened, Zhu Shuren took the lead in setting the tone for the meeting and let everyone speak freely.

After everyone exchanged glances with each other, considering that this issue would ultimately serve the military, it was Zhang Huangyan, the secretary of the Ministry of War, who spoke first.

Zhang Huangyan did not have any imagination for science and technology, so he put forward two items in accordance with the current military shortcomings:

"According to the losses in the border conflict reported by General Li before, if we have to fight with Burma and Vietnam, the biggest problem in ordnance technology today is that the waterproof and moisture-proof firearms are not done well.

Although Wuchangzao has been improved for several generations and gradually improved, the problem that the flintlock rifle cannot fire in a hot and humid environment has never been cured.

Nowadays, the new generation of border troops of the Ming Dynasty have grown up with Wuchang, and there are fewer and fewer veterans who can be good at using a variety of weapons, and we can only count on those veterans who are at least forty years old and have experience in the previous battles in the south and southern Sichuan and Xiangxi, so that they can skillfully switch weapons in the battles with those southern barbarians to ensure that their combat effectiveness is not weakened.

However, this kind of soldier is dying more and more in battle, dying of disease and old age, and gradually withering, and if it takes another three or five years to start against Burma and Yue, I am afraid that the number of people who can be counted on will be even less. In the final analysis, it is necessary to strengthen the protection of weapons against heat and humidity, or it is necessary to specialize in refining soldiers and training all kinds of equipment, not only bayonets and muskets. ”

After listening to this feedback, Zhu Shuren subconsciously looked at Li Dingguo, who was only allowed to participate in the meeting for the first time today, and asked a few questions.

He also received a positive reply from Li Dingguo, saying that the Ming border army in Yunnan did have difficulties in this regard, and now Li Dingguo is also relying on the veterans of the old Western Army in Zhao'an, including Sun Kewang's struggle in the mountains of Guizhou to fight those troops, and now they have been completely used.

However, these people are also old, after all, it has been nineteen years since Chongzhen's death, and these former peasant soldiers surrendered at least nineteen years ago, so how can they have more than 20 years of military qualifications.

After Zhu Shuren confirmed, he couldn't help but have a headache, this problem is really difficult to solve. Because the reliability of the hot and humid environment of firearms has always been a big problem, and it is basically impossible to completely solve it in the era of muskets.

Historically, the colonial occupation of tropical inland rainforests by the Western world was not fully developed until the second half of the 19th century.

In the Americas, the muskets could only help the colonists to tightly control the interior of Mexico, and further south of the Central American inland rainforest, the European colonists had much weaker control (the coastal ports were still under control)

In Africa, the central rainforest of Black Africa was also colonized after 1850, such as the famous Belgian Enclosure of Leopold Congo. The French were making a similar progress in Southeast Asia against Indochina.

Who let until 1841, at the time of the Opium War, the flintlock pistol still not completely solve the problem of fighting in the rainstorm. When the British army was in Sanyuanli, it was not because of the heavy rain that a considerable part of the flintlock rifles could not be used.

Although Zhu Shuren knows the history and the evolution route of science and technology, he can't directly guide the research and development after all, and the real dry goods in his stomach have long been used up.

So he could only outline and say a few words: "This matter cannot be solved overnight, and it may not be possible to completely cure it for decades." Therefore, I can't force Burma and Yue to die in the future, just knock and knock to let them know how to advance and retreat.

To solve the reliability of the musket, on the one hand, let the Academy of Sciences continue to add a waterproof structure to the ignition mechanism of the musket, and on the other hand, it is to imagine a new way of excitation.

However, the waterproof mechanism can only increase the probability of rainproof, and cannot solve the environment where the air is too humid.

Didn't we make nitrocellulose a few years ago and use it for rifled sniper bullets, so that the people of the Chemical Research Institute can think more about whether the method of making sulfuric acid and nitric acid can further reduce costs and increase efficiency and increase output.

Equipping more elite troops with smokeless gunpowder firearms, combined with smokeless gunpowder, and completely reforming the excitation mechanism, it is estimated that the flintlock principle will have to be completely changed in order to cure the problem. ”

Zhu Shuren's instructions were naturally written down by the people of the Academy of Sciences, and of course they had to be arranged according to the instructions of the regent after they returned.

In the original history, in fact, in 1815, the West also invented the first generation of fire cap firing pistols, replacing the flintlock principle, which was first developed by the British.

In the early days, the fire cap gun was relatively similar to the flintlock pistol, and the impact fire cap was still used, and it was only after the appearance of smokeless gunpowder that there was a more efficient and reliable firing needle fire cap, which was completely in line with the stabbing needle primer mode of the modern gun.

It's just that the 1815 prototype fire cap gun in history tossed and turned for several years, and by the time the energy was produced, the Napoleonic Wars had long been over.

The European continent relied on the Vienna system created by Prime Minister Metternich to maintain general peace for nearly a hundred years, and there was no full-scale war in Europe until World War I, so the British did not bother to spend money to replace the flintlock pistol during the Napoleonic Wars.

At the time of the crow, the British were still using flintlock pistols, and in the final analysis, they were reluctant to pay for the silver, and felt that it was unnecessary to completely change the fire cap. It wasn't until more than ten years later that the Anglo-French coalition helped the Ottomans conquer Crimea and fight the Rakshasas, that they were fully and urgently reloaded with fire cap guns before the war.

So from this point of view, Zhu Shuren instructed the military industry department to develop early waterproof fire cap technology to improve the reliability of muskets, but there are no technical barriers and generation gaps that are too unrebellious.

The "Wuchang Zao" produced by Daye Arsenal during the Qing Dynasty was roughly equivalent to the Charleville 1763 model in the West, and the experience accumulated in this area was already very rich.

If you want to progress to the British Manton 1815 type, there is a theoretical generation difference of 50 years in the middle, but in fact, in the West at that time, from the end of the Seven Years' War in the 1760s to the French Civil War in the 1780s and before the outbreak of American independence, all countries had no sense of crisis, and military research and development was also suspended for a time.

So in fact, in the war years, this is just a 30-year technological generation difference. Now with Zhu Shuren's guiding ideology and route allocation, if you want to bridge the 30-year technological generation gap, hard work is still enough.

……

After a rough plan for the technical shortcomings that can be made up in the fields of metallurgy, machinery and processing.

Zhu Shuren felt that the direct military level of climbing technology was basically enough.

In the next few years, the remaining focus of scientific and technological work should be to tap the potential of those dual-use fields. After all, it is still peace-building, and the science and technology tree should not be too biased towards the aspect of reckless military force.

If certain technological goals can be achieved slowly with dual-use technology, there is no need to focus on relying purely on military technology to rush to achieve results.

For example, when discussing the issue of "reliability of rifles in tropical humid environments", Zhu Shuren found that if the mass production cost and production scale of smokeless gunpowder can be brought down from the civilian chemical field, it will be much more cost-effective than designing a lot of complex waterproof structures for the musket itself.

Because of the complex mechanical structure design of muskets, it is useless to move to the civilian field. In the future, after the gunpowder materials come up, there will be no need for these historical detours and tinkering.

And if we do a good job in the chemical industry, the income will always be eaten, and the people can also get benefits. In the future, the Ming Dynasty will engage in the construction of water conservancy projects and civil engineering, as long as the gunpowder and explosives technology trees are kept behind, it will be harmless.

Based on this common understanding, the follow-up agenda of the science and technology planning meeting will go more smoothly. Naturally, everyone reached a consensus:

In the next seven-year plan, in the field of science and technology, the most important thing that the Ming Dynasty needs to be strengthened by the imperial court is the chemical field.

Optimization of the formulation, preparation, production efficiency, and mass production of smokeless gunpowder and other explosives is of course the first priority.

Other synthetic manufacturing of tropical disease prevention and control drugs, tropical anthelmintic drugs, and insecticides are also a sub-direction worth working on. Because the inland rainforests of Myanmar and Vietnam are really terrifying.

Although the Ming Dynasty had previously conquered these remote areas, there was no record of a stable presence and maintenance of rule throughout the year. Even if the Ming army had reached Vietnam, it would only be able to gain a firm foothold in winter, and it would still have to leave in summer, otherwise it would end up in batches.

Including fifteen years ago, when Zhu Shuren asked Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong to recover Dayuan, it is said that Dayuan is cooler than Vietnam, but on the border between the tropics and subtropics. But in the end, he still paid the price of Zheng Zhilong's illness and death on Dayuan Island, and Zheng Chenggong was all fine because he was young and strong at the time. At that time, all military operations were also carried out in winter, and troops had to be collected until the summer.

It can be seen that the problem of summer stationing in the tropics is a difficult point that Daming has never overcome. In the next seven years, it is necessary to focus on solving this problem, and through the progress of medicinal chemistry, we will completely realize the deterrent effect of tropical countries in all weather and all seasons.

From now on, let them know: Da Ming can clean them up at any time as long as he wants.

In addition to explosives, tropical disease drugs, and pesticides, Zhu Shuren himself also added a direction of efforts in the field of chemistry for the next seven years, that is, the development and utilization of rubber and the improvement of the properties of rubber products.

The reason why rubber was chosen is also because Zhu Shuren knows that in the early days of industrial history, new materials such as rubber are important for waterproof and airtight.

In the early days, the steam engine had serious air leakage, and various cylinders were needed to nest the sealing rings of the seams.

Zhu Shuren knows very well that many productions in the early chemical industry can be mass-produced as long as there is a formula, and experiments are done to try out the reaction mode and production method, even if there is no steam engine and has not entered the industrial age. Whether there is a steam engine or not, at most, it only affects the power source of the reactor and the scale of reaction production.

In later generations, there were so many local chemical productions, and India and Pakistan Iron could even make battery materials or recycle heavy metal compounds without any machines in small family workshops, which shows that the chemical industry's dependence on power sources is very low.

Therefore, even if Daming did not have a steam engine, Zhu Shuren was sure to light up the chemical technology tree first and get out a bunch of chemical products from the 1830s or even the 1850s. As long as the "formulas" of the reaction equation and reaction environment can be summarized, the shortcomings of other science and technology will not be affected at all.

Historically, Goodyear in the West successively came up with nitrocelluated rubber and vulcanized rubber in the 1830s, which solved the problem of high-temperature dissolution of rubber and rapid aging of temperature differences.

In Zhu Shuren's view, since the current soil method of sulfuric acid method in the Ming Dynasty has started, and this soil method of nitric acid can be used to make nitrate fiber smokeless gunpowder, then expand the use of sulfuric acid nitric acid, and the vulcanization and nitrification of rubber have also been thoroughly studied, which is just a layer of window paper.

Historically, it took the British to improve the steam engine by Watt in the 1780s, and when Watt built the steam engine, he did not process rubber to ensure that the steam lines were sealed. If the Ming Dynasty first made the rubber sealing technology a little better, then maybe it only needs to reach the machining design level of 1750~1760 in the West to build a watt steam engine.

This can be regarded as a curve to make up for the shortcomings.

Under such a guiding ideology. In the next seven years, Daming's national scientific research strength is almost entirely inclined to the field of chemistry. As for other general civilian science and technology, it is enough to have private investment and state encouragement.

The guiding spirit of Zhu Shuren's meeting was quickly distributed to the Daming Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Industry.

The Ministry of Industry raised resources, Fang Yizhi was not ambiguous, and immediately allocated it to his little sister. If the household department gives money and budget, the household department does not dare to delay in the slightest.

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PS: I'm busy dealing with other things in the morning, and today's chapter may be a bit of a running account, so let's take care of it. Strive for the later plot to be more vivid. The book is up to 2.2 million words to complete. If it's fast, it may be 2.1 million words, it depends.

The follow-up should be explained clearly. After all, it has been written to this point, and it must be a good beginning and a good end, so everyone can rest assured.